


Put Out Every One

by tricksterquinn



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricksterquinn/pseuds/tricksterquinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles set during and after Camlann.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put Out Every One

**Author's Note:**

> Light spoilers through 1x13 Le Morte d'Arthur.  
> Thanks to ficbyzee and artaxastra for audiencing and betaing. The title is from the poem _Funeral Blues_ by WH Auden.  
>  Originally posted 2009-01-08.

Merlin sees the strike fall, sees Arthur go down from across the field. Without conscious thought, he's running towards him, slipping heedlessly in the viscera of the battlefield. He drops down beside him, hands scrabbling at armor, struggling to feel at Arthur's neck, searching desperately for a pulse. There is none. An illusion of warmth lingers, but Arthur's body is cooling already, eyes staring sightlessly, ugly wound gaping in his side.

Around them, the battle rages on, not yet noticing the loss.

Hands covered in Arthur's blood, Merlin looks up grimly. His eyes flash vicious gold.

"Die," he orders. And they do.

***

Arthur breathes still, if only just.

His breath rattles horribly in his chest, but his heart still beats, his nerves twitch if pricked. The horrible wound has resewn itself, organs shuffled back into their proper places. The gash is shiny and old, now, scar tissue crusted over something which would never, naturally, have healed.

He is exhausted beyond measure, draining himself to simply keep Arthur's blood pumping through his veins.

It's all Merlin can do for him; for all his art, he cannot make him wake.

What good is power, he wonders blearily, if you cannot save what matters most?

***

Guinevere tries to speak to him, as does Lancelot. He refuses to acknowledge them. Morgana comes to him at last, in desperation, to plead.

He cannot remember his affection for her, for any of them, not now. Not with Arthur lying in a sleep from which he will never wake, not when a difference in any of their actions could have prevented this--

(He knows better of course; and more than that, he knows he himself is as culpable as anyone. It is no comfort that he hates them less than himself.)

But Morgana comes at last, and her, her he will see.

***

Morgana folds her hands against a blood red cloak (Merlin has not seen her wear red in years) and meets his eye. She is strange, stern, formidable and implacable. Merlin wonders if this is how others see him, too, if all enchanters become fey and distant with the years. He does not think himself so without pity.

Arthur, he thinks, was the key. Arthur kept him normal, grounded, real. Arthur looked at him and saw nothing but the boy he was when they first met, and so, as long as he was with Arthur, Merlin was that boy.

But Arthur is not here anymore.

***

Merlin gestures wildly at the still form behind them.

"You can see him here, like this, and still say all is not lost?"

"Merlin, you and I both know that as long as he breathes, it isn't." She looks at him sympathetically. "You can't keep this up forever. Sooner or later, you will sleep, and then what?"

Merlin turns away from her, because he knows that she's right.

She comes up behind him, rubs slim hands over his shoulders. He relaxes into them almost against his will.

"There is another way," she says gently.

"All right," he says, and opens his eyes.

***

"The Blessed Isle", they call it. Merlin cannot see it as such; it has brought him too much bitterness. It is here that it all began, the tangled skein that led, eventually, inexorably, inevitably, to this fateful, terrible end. It is here that Merlin set them on this path, and here that brought Morgana's terrible betrayal.

And it is here that they bring Arthur's body, draped in samite and crowned in gold.

"The Blessed Isle", they call it. Merlin cannot see it as such. But now, as he watches the small boat row into the mists, he lets himself hope.


End file.
